Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes to heaven's new-born Heir.

Such music (as 'tis said)

Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great

His constellations set,

And the well-balanced world on hinges hung, And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the welt'ring waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our human ears,

If ye have pow'r to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,

And let the base of heav'n's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full consort to th' angelic symphony.

For, if such holy song

Inwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age

And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

of gold,

And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;

And hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering:

And heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But wisest Fate says No,

This must not yet be so,

The babe yet lies, in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify;

Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep,

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep;

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out brake:

The aged earth, aghast

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

When, at the world's last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day

The old dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway,

And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs thro' the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No mighty trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flow'r-inwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar Pow'r foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice batter'd god of Palestine; And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heav'n's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshow'r'd grass with lowings loud; Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fayes

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest,

Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heav'n's youngest teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping lord with handmaid lamp attending;

And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

331.-THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS.

HALL.

[THE great scene of Shakspere's Richard III. (Act iii. Scene iv.), in which Gloster accuses Hastings of witchcraft, and sends him to the block as a traitor, faithfully follows the Chronicle of Hall. But this remarkable narrative has even a higher interest. It is taken, almost literally, from Sir Thomas More's Tragical History of Richard III.' The air of truth which pervades this history throughout and which Shakspere has almost invariably retained-is partly attributable to the minuteness with which little incidents are detailed, such as Richard's asking the Bishop of Ely for strawberries from his garden. More, when he was fifteen, was placed in the house of this same Bishop of

Ely-Thomas Morton-then Archbishop of Canterbury; and from his table-talk these anecdotes were probably derived, and treasured up by the "one wit in England."]

The Lord Protector caused a council to be set at the tower on the Friday the thirteenth day of June, where was much communing for the honourable solemnity of the coronation, of the which the time ap pointed approached so near, that the pageants were a making day and night at Westminster, and victual killed which afterward was cast away.

These lords thus sitting communing of this matter, the Protector came in among them about nine of the clock, saluting them courteously, excusing himself that he had been from them so long, saying merely that he had been a sleeper that day. And, after a little talking with them, he said to the Bishop of Ely, "My lord, you have very good strawberries in your garden, at Holborn; I require you let us have a mess of them." "Gladly, my lord," quoth he, "I would I had some better thing as ready to your pleasure as that;" and with that, in all haste, he sent his servant for a dish of strawberries. The Protector set the lords fast in communing, and thereupon prayed them to spare him a little, and so he departed, and came again between ten and eleven of the clock all changed, with a sour, angry, countenance, knitting the brows, frowning, and fretting, and gnawing on his lips, and so set him down in his place. All the lords were dismayed and sore marvelled of this manner, and sudden change, and what thing should him ail. When he had sitten awhile, thus he began:-"What were they worthy to have that compass and imagine the destruction of me, being so near of blood to the king, and protector of this his royal realm?" At which question all the lords sat sore astonished, musing much by whom the question should be meant, of which every man knew himself clear.

Then the Lord Hastings, as he that, for the familiarity that was between them, thought he might be boldest with him, answered, and said that they were worthy to be punished as heinous traitors, whatsoever they were, and all the other affirmed the same, "that is (quoth he) yonder sorceress my brother's wife, and other with her, meaning the queen;" at these words many of the lords were sore abashed which favoured her, but the Lord Hastings was better content in his mind that it was moved by her, than by any that he loved better, albeit his